Jean-Baptiste Besançon: Silence Is So Accurate

Francis Gallery artist Jean-Baptiste Besançon is participating in a group exhibition titled, Silence Is So Accurate, at Geukens & De Vil in Antwerp, Belgium. Curated by Lien Craps and dedicated to Leonarrd D'Hondt, her grandfather for whom silence brought relief after a long and brave fight, this exhibition includes works from artists Matthew Allen, Anna-Eva Bergman, Lucia Bru, Francesco De Preszzo, Marco De Sanctis, Ayan Farah, Matthew Feyld, Per Kesselmar, Nika Neelova, Benjamin Sabatier, Günterr Umberg, Pieter Vermeerrsch, Christoph Weber, and John Zurier.

Throughout recent art history, the quest for silence has taken on many different forms with John Cage’s 4’33” as one of its most famous examples. The artist framed silence in three quiet movements, forcing the audience to listen to the mere sounds of their immediate surroundings. By doing so, he showed how silence – despite the fact that it is formally defined as the complete cessation of all sounds – inescapably remains an element of dialogue. This exhibition aims to open this dialogue by consciously introducing a pause without providing any obvious or fixed conventional meanings. Lines, shapes, rhythm, or (the absence of) colour, create serenity, stillness or timeless content. Immersed, we encounter various forms of silence as a refreshing contrast to the flux of impressions, images and sounds peculiar to contemporary day society.